584 ebike rabbit hole part 6

What can I say? We haven't made it through all the screenshots yet. The summer bike season may well pass before I commit to anything. That's ok.

Oh, there are other things I've been thinking of writing about, too. Our new town, for instance. But my "clean plate ethic" is seeing this through. So be prepared for more talk of mid-drive motors versus hub motors, dropper posts and fat tires versus 29ers. 

Here's the CSC FT1000MD. At this point, I'm starting to learn some things. Much like car makers often indicate features of a car in it's name, so do ebike makers.

With this CSC, the "1000" likely means that's a 1000 watt motor. Which means it's probably a Bafang M620. The "MD" means mid-drive. Let's take a look at the specs to see what the "FT" might mean.

Not sure. But I did get the motor right. Based on reviews I've seen over the years, this bike seemed like a pretty good bet for me. Now, I can see that the battery is a bit smaller than I'm looking for, at only 16 amp hours. That's not bad, but 20Ah can be found.

Now going a little deeper, into the guts. The FT 1000 MD features a 48 volt, 28 AMP controller. That's pretty good. The voltage on the controller tells you how much of the high-end power from the battery will get passed through to the motor, in this case, all of it. To the best of my understanding. 

Also to the best of my understanding, the amperage of the controller tells you how much of the low-end power, the torque, will go through. 28 Amps is decently high. 40amps is about as much as I've seen on a consumer, street-legal-ish ebike. 

Those 18650 3500mili amp hour battery cells are ok, but the current state of the art is the 21700 5000MAh cells called the "Tesla" batteries.

CSC is based in So-Cal, they started on motorcycles and I think import most or all of their products. Really, there are relatively few American ebike brands making their own bikes in the USA. And even fewer making their components.

This company, Cyberbike, makes a model called the Mullet that would be a top contender for me, except it's never in stock. What they do have (or did a few months ago when I took all these screenshots) is this bike, the Bandit. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill Alibaba special.

Honestly, I don't remember what 5216 means? Otherwise, it has a 500 watt mid-drive motor, which is fine. The mid-drive means you're using your bike's gears for mechanical advantage, so you don't need as much power as a hub motor. Above 500 and you start getting into, "whoops, just broke my chain again" territory that requires a bit more careful riding. 

The 13Ah battery, however, while decent for a low-end bike, is not what I'm looking for.

Have we already looked at this? It's a mid-drive with the older geometry full suspension. Price is ok, probably double or more what they buy it for from China.

You can, however, outfit it with two batteries, fenders, and a rear rack. All features I like. However...uh... It sort of looks ugly at that point. What I call a "Frankenbike."

This brings us around to our next bike(s), also from Southern California. 

"The Weapon" features the newer 21700 cells. They have slightly more energy density, so you can get more battery in the same space.

Unfortunately, The Weapon wasn't in stock when I was taking screenshots. What FLX, a San Diego importer who got their start on Indiegogo, did have in stock was this hardtail.

The F5 Trail gets pretty good reviews. And it has the M600 Bafang motor, a 500 watt mid-drive that's a bit more chain friendly.

With the bigger battery and touring package options it's about $3k.

That includes a suspension seat post. 

FLX sells what looks to be the same bike with fat tires and calls it the Gladiator. IMHO, it actually looks better with fenders and a rack than the F5.

It's heavy though, at 77lbs, 6 more than the F5, and 25 more than my brother-in-law's Specialized Turbo Levo.

We keep looking.